DESERTED VILLAGES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1939, Page 3

DESERTED VILLAGES

SOME FRENCH ASSOCIATIONS. In the Vivarais and the Cevennes, about which Robert Louis Stevenson left a charming book recounting his travels on foot with his donkey, Modestine, carrying his baggage, there are a number of deserted villages. The deserted villages are found perched high on the hillside, and as many have been deserted only in recent years they are not yet in ruins. In some, the visitor has the impression of walking in villages of which the inhabitants’ must surely be working in the neighbouring fields. Here open- a door, he finds the silent rooms often contain furniture. Here by the chimney corner is an old arm chair which once was someone’s favourite seat. The narrow alley ways lead up between the old houses, the village shop is shuttered for ever, and no one sits beneath the leafy shade of the tree on the village square. Only the flap of birds’ wings breaks the silence as they come, to roost beneath the eaves. A bit of a' chintz curtain hangs at an upper window where someone used to look out. Curiosity of the visitor gives way to awe, and as evening comes creeping into the streets the solitude grows oppressive. The chief reason for the abandonment of the villages is water. As houses in the valley have improved, chiefly in matters of wat-er supply, the advantages they offer have caused the inhabitants of the villages to descend from the high ground. In one village of the Vivarais a solitary inhabitant refused to leave. He said he had been born in the village where his father had been born before him, and there he intended to stay. For some years he walked the deserted streets, and occasionally a charitable person from thd valley would climb up to see all was well with him, until one day he was found sleeping his last sleep beside the hearth he had never been able to leave.